Environmentalists sued the Forest Service in 2008, saying it had not adequately considered the cumulative impact of roads and trails when writing management plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino forests. They said the contested strategies designated more than 900,000 roadless acres for possible road building or other development.

Roads can harm habitat by increasing noise in the backcountry, becoming a vector for non-native plants and creating erosion. They are a common flash point on forest lands across the West because some visitors want more roads and amenities.

At roughly 460,000 acres, Cleveland National Forest extends across San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties. It’s a major recreation area that gets hundreds of thousands of visits each year from a wide variety of user groups, including hikers, bikers, rock climbers and off-roaders.